10.
Can any of the quilting software programs do an accurate job of estimating yardage?

This
is an excellent question! Most of the quilt programs do fairly accurate yardage
estimates -- the inaccurate measurements come when the calculating measurements
are for triangles -- the quilt programs estimate calculations based on the
selected object. Each time that you select a triangle, it shows a square select
box around the triangle. The computer yardage calculations are for the selected
box not the actual triangle -- a glitch in how the computer calculates.

Repeated
another: If a triangle is inside that selected box, it fills only half of the
box, but the computer perceives the WHOLE box, not the triangle inside the box.
This creates inaccurate fabric requirement charts for triangle sections of a patch.

A few triangles here and there in a pattern do not pose much of a problem,
but it is real problem if there are a large number of triangles in the design.

Bottom
line: If you know this flaw is built into how computers calculate the measurements
you can be aware ahead of time when a quilt that has many many triangles that
the calculations are probably inaccurate.